New LSI PCIe 3.0 RAID Controllers Including the LSI 9270-8i

LSI has announced its new PCIe 3.0 RAID controllers that take advantage of the native PCIe 3.0 interfaces found on both the Ivy Bridge based Xeon E3 series and the Sandy Bridge-E (and Sandy Bridge-EP) based Xeon E5 series CPUs. Recently we mentioned the new LSI PCIe 3.0 6.0gbps HBA lineup which should improve speeds significantly and take advantage of the lower latency PCIe 3.0 connections in the Intel Xeon E5 series. Today we are looking at the new LSI RAID cards all built on the dual core ROC running at 800MHz. For those wondering, the current minimum recommended HBA is the LSI 9211-8i with its single core 533MHz single core and a PCIe 2.0 interface. The new cards promise to provide higher bandwidth through the faster controller and host bus. LSI has also begun to aggressively bundle software for caching traditional spindle media onto solid state drives. LSI needs to promote its software because there are serious threats as more and more storage vendors implement storage tiering in their offerings. Let’s take a look at the new models.

New LSI MegaRAID SAS and SATA Controller Pricing

Pricing for the newly announced models can be found in the table below. For those users that have their own cables and such, the prices for the single card models are a bit less expensive.

Pricing seems a bit higher than the previous generation parts. Let’s now take a look at the key features of each card family.

9270-8i Features

• Eight internal SATA+SAS ports
• Two mini-SAS SFF-8087 x4 connectors – top mount
• 6Gb/s throughput per port
• PowerPC based SAS2208 Dual Core ROC at 800MHz
• MD2 Low profile (6.6″ X 2.536″)
• x8 PCI Express 3.0 host interface
• 1GB DDRIII cache (1333MHz)
• Optional battery backup unit (LSIiBBU09 remote mount)
• Connect up to 128 SATA and/or SAS devices
• RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 6
• RAID spans 10, 50 and 60

9270-8i, 9271-8iCC and 9270-4i Features

• Eight internal SATA+SAS ports (LSI 9271-8i) or four internal ports (LSI 9271-4i)
• Two (LSI 9271-8i) or One (LSI 9271-4i) mini-SAS SFF-8087 x4 connector(s) – side mount
• 6Gb/s throughput per port
• PowerPC based SAS2208 Dual Core ROC at 800MHz
• MD2 Low profile (6.6″ X 2.536″)
• x8 PCI Express 3.0 host interface
• 1GB DDRIII cache (1333MHz)
• Optional CacheVault Module (LSICVM01)
• Optional battery backup unit (LSIiBBU09 remote mount)
• Connect up to 128 SATA and/or SAS devices
• RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 6
• RAID spans 10, 50 and 60
• LSI 9271-8iCC includes CacheCade Pro 2.0 software for SSDs

MegaRAID SAS 9286-8e, 9286CV-8e and 9286CV-8eCC Features

• Eight external SATA+SAS ports
• Two mini-SAS SFF-8088 x4 connectors
• 6Gb/s throughput per port
• PowerPC based SAS2208 Dual Core ROC at 800MHz
• MD2 Low profile (6.6″ X 2.536″)
• x8 PCI Express 3.0 host interface
• 1GB DDRIII cache (1333MHz)
• MegaRAID CacheVault flash cache protection (included in the 9286CV-8e and 9286CV-8eCC)
• Connect up to 240 SATA and/or SAS devices
• RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 6
• RAID spans 10, 50 and 60
• Battery backup (LSIiBBU09) (included in the 9286CV-8e and 9286CV-8eCC)
• LSI 9286-8eCC includes CacheCade Pro 2.0 software for SSDs

Overall, it is good to see LSI update its offerings to the newer PCI express 3.0 bus that can be found on the newer generation Intel Xeon platforms. Although the LGA 1155 and 1156 Intel Xeon have had PCI express lanes emanate from the CPU directly for some time now, with the new Intel Xeon E5 generation, Intel has added PCIe 3.0 lanes directly to the Intel Xeon E5 die itself, instead of sitting off of a northbridge that added latency. This lower latency combined with the new PowerPC based dual core ROC should produce some nice performance numbers.